Even if you’re in your late 20s and wrestled in high school, the sport looks a lot different now than it did in your day.
The takedown is now three points instead of two.
Overtime now looks much different than it used to, and let’s not even start with NIL and the transfer portal.
Over the last three days, I haven’t done much of anything other than watch wrestling (and some basketball). It wasn’t even 10 years ago that was not possible unless you were at the NCAA Wrestling Championships. There was no ESPN+ to watch every mat, and the only way to watch it on television was to tune in to ESPN Saturday night for the finals.
Then two things happened on this particular Saturday evening that were as big as anything that can be recalled in recent memory.
The first happened when Penn State’s Carter Starocci won an unprecedented fifth NCAA title, which will probably never be done again.
Carter Starocci Makes History, Penn State Breaks Own Points Record at NCAA Wrestling Championships
The second was Oklahoma State’s Wyatt Hendrickson doing the once-unthinkable and beating Minnesota’s Gable Steveson in the final 20 seconds.
It might have been the most shocking moment in college wrestling history.
More eyeballs are watching wrestling these days, and it’s outstanding. The NCAA will finally sanction women’s wrestling next season.
It’s all evidence that the sport is growing, and that couldn’t be better news for anyone that enjoys the sport.
It also helps that President Trump showed up to the championships.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Now before you make a comment about anything political, let it be known very clearly that I don’t care about your politics. Actually, I care very little about politics period. But if you hear that any president in the history of the United States is coming to the college wrestling championships, why is that not a great thing?
PSU’s newest national champion in Mitchell Mesenbrink put it perfectly when he was asked about the president coming to the championships.
“If you put politics aside, whether you’re conservative or liberal, to have the President of the United States be at something we want to get people to watch and be able to funnel not just money but people’s time and attention, I think that’s cool,” Mesenbrink said.
“It’s the leader of the free world. That’s really cool.”
Mesenbrink is one of the most thoughtful and smart athletes I’ve ever been around. I would say he is the smartest, but I was also around when math whiz John Urschel was playing football at Penn State.
Mesenbrink is a psychology major, and it feels like you’re getting some sort of lesson from him every time he speaks to the media. He’s absolutely right about the above.
Before the turn of the century, the college wrestling championships were held in campus arenas. They outgrew those arenas, and ever since they’ve been held in professional basketball and hockey arenas. Over 100,000 total packed the Wells Fargo Center over the last three days, and prices to get in the building on secondary markets suggest the demand for tickets was high.
Dare I say the NCAA Championships are starting to outgrow the basketball and hockey arenas?
It’s time to encourage more people to start watching wrestling. It’s time for the TV networks to invest in more air time for the sport, especially on the major networks. Maybe in a few years, it’s time to start looking into holding the championships in a football stadium.
Dream big, right?
I lost count how many times this season I heard a Penn State wrestler talk about how much they love wrestling. Beau Bartlett said it numerous times over the last couple years.
The first step that needs to be done is to move the tournament off the same time as the first weekend of the basketball tournament. There would be even more people tuned in if wrestling wasn’t competing with a huge money maker like basketball.
It’s time this sport cashes in and becomes the hidden gold mine that the NCAA loves just as much as fans and competitors love the sport.
